Free Republic

...Hmmm. If it’s true, as President Obama said that the fence across our southern border is “basically complete,” let’s see what kind of math that equates to in other areas of Presidential endeavor. 670 miles of completed fence divided by an entire border of 2,000 miles. That gives us a baseline definition: “Basically complete” = 33% done.By that standard, we could say that joblessness is basically solved: 33% of the current unemployment rate of 9% gives us a basically complete unemployment rate of 3%. Wow! We haven’t seen anything close to that since 1969! We could say that our looming...

Warfare seems to obey mathematical rules. Whether soldiers can make use of that fact remains to be seen IN 1948 Lewis Fry Richardson, a British scientist, published what was probably the first rigorous analysis of the statistics of war. Richardson had spent seven years gathering data on the wars waged in the century or so prior to his study. There were almost 300 of them. The list runs from conflicts that claimed a thousand or so lives to the devastation of the two world wars. But when he plotted his results, he found that these diverse events fell into a...

Could Einstein's Theory of Relativity be a few mathematical equations away from being disproved? Jacob Barnett of Hamilton County, Ind., who is just weeks shy of his 13th birthday, thinks so. And, he's got the solutions to prove it. Barnett, who has an IQ of 170, explained his expanded theory of relativity — in a YouTube video. His mother Kristine Barnett, who admittedly flunked math, did what every other mother would do if her genius son started talking mathematical gibberish. She told him to explain the whole thing slowly while she taped her son explaining his take on the theory....

Thousands of Georgia's teens are continuing to fail final exams as they struggle with the accelerated concepts of integrated math. The latest evidence is the results to the End-of-Course Tests given in December, when 17,520 students flunked the Math I and Math II exams. The state's school districts are likely to examine those scores as they decide whether to keep teaching integrated math to their high school students or return to more traditional methods. Of the 20,679 students who took the Math I final in December, 42.6 percent failed it. That's a 19.6 percent increase from the spring, when 114,005...

Harry Reid's math problemBy DAVID NATHER | 3/4/11 7:13 AM EST Never mind the House. The real obstacle to solving the standoff over funding for the health care law may be the Senate. As the talks begin on how to fund the government for the rest of the year, there’s a very real math problem that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces. There won’t be 60 votes to end a filibuster on any spending agreement that includes the House language to defund the health care law, because Senate Democrats would never go for it. But if it’s all stripped out,...

Educators said only 13 percent of Albuquerque Public Schools eighth-graders passed a standard math test. According to January's district benchmark assessment test results, only 13 percent of about 4,500 APS eighth-graders are proficient in math.“If they're not proficient in math, they're not going to be successful in life,” said parent Patricia Duran.Teachers said if the eighth-graders are not proficient now, there is serious doubt they will pass an exam as a junior, which is required for them to graduate.

Shortly after the Green Bay Packers turned the nation’s attention to the Midwestern state, Wisconsin once again has garnered the nation’s attention. At stake this time is not a trophy, but a prized retirement package promised to public employees. Throngs of protesters have taken to Madison, Wisconsin to either show their support or disdain for Governor Scott Walker’s plan to require public employees to pay 5.8 percent (the national average is roughly 12 percent) of their salary as a contribution to their pension. The looming issue of funding public pensions is not unique to Wisconsin. Governor Walker’s stand, however, has...

BEN GOERTZEL: Hugo, you've recently published an article on KurzweilAI.net titled "From Cosmism to Deism”, which essentially posits a transhumanist argument that some sort of “God” exists, i.e. some sort of intelligent creator of our universe – and furthermore that this “creator” is probably some sort of mathematician. I'm curious to ask you some questions digging a little deeper into your thinking on these (fun, albeit rather far-out) issues. Could you start out by clarifying what you mean by the two terms in the title of your article, cosmism and deism? (I know what I mean by Cosmism, and I...

Finite formula found for partition numbersFor centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. Many mathematicians added major pieces to the puzzle, but all of them fell short of a full theory to explain partitions. Instead, their work raised more questions about this fundamental area of math. On Friday, Emory mathematician Ken Ono will unveil new theories that answer these famous old questions. Ono and his research team have discovered that partition numbers behave like fractals. They have unlocked the divisibility properties of partitions, and developed...

I need the help of some of you who are more well versed in math than I, especiaqlly percentages. John sells a car to Ted for total of $2000.00. Included in the price is a 5% sales tax. What was the original sale price of the car before the tax was added. If you could please show me the formula you used to arrive at your answer I would greatly appreciate it. thanks

“As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives..” You may know this singsong quiz, But what you might not know is this: That it began with ancient Egypt’s Early math-filled manuscripts. It’s true. That very British-sounding St. Ives conundrum (the one where the seven wives each have seven sacks containing seven cats who each have seven kits, and you have to figure out how many are going to St. Ives) has a decidedly archaic antecedent. An Egyptian document more than 3,600 years old, the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, contains a puzzle of sevens that bears...

November 19, 2010 'Reform Math' By Jason and Genevieve McNew Pay attention to what our children are being taught. Not even simple arithmetic is safe from progressive stupidity. Apples and peaches make great neighbors. Here in "upper" Adams County, Pennsylvania (also the seat of Gettysburg and the battlefields), there are twenty thousand acres of fruit trees. Many businesses are closed on Sundays, and "traffic" consists of getting stuck behind a combine or waiting for the flock of mallards that live behind the 7-11 to finish crossing Route 394. I have often compared it to Mayberry. We moved here in June...

Was wondering if there are any chemistry whizzes here who can help me with a problem in a lab I am working on? We were given a list of %T values and told to use A=2-log %T to get the absorbency (A). I'm struggling with this. Can someone take me step by step through one? Say 25%?

On Yahoo answers today, I came across a disturbing question asked by, presumably, a high school math student. Here is the question: Please, please explain these answers to me!! I am so frustrated!? No matter how hard I try, I can not understand domain and range!!! The definition in my book says domain is all the x alues and range is all the y values. That's it. Soo, how the heck do you figuire this out? 1. f(x) = x+2/x Domain: x does not equal zero Range: f(x) = any real # 2. f(x) 2/x Domain: x does not equal...

... For decades, efforts to improve math skills have driven schools to embrace one math program after another, abandoning a program when it does not work and moving on to something purportedly better. In the 1960s there was the “new math,” whose focus on abstract theories spurred a back-to-basics movement, emphasizing rote learning and drills. After that came “reform math,” whose focus on problem solving and conceptual understanding has been derided by critics as the “new new math.” Singapore math may well be a fad, too, but supporters say it seems to address one of the difficulties in teaching math:...

OK I need some math help anybody.

For a few years I thought the worst possible gimmick in education was Whole Word, basically a device to make sure kids don't learn to read. In the last few months, the clamor grew about Core Standards and National Standards, and I started to focus on arithmetic. More and more I’m struck by the parallel with Whole Word. The Education Establishment seems to specialize in coming up with techniques that are almost guaranteed not to work. I know there are cynics who will say, well, of course, everyone knows this. Even so, the thing that fascinates me is the amount...

This new report from the liberal group Families USA contains this eye-popping paragraph: Families USA commissioned The Lewin Group to use its economic models to estimate how many individuals would benefit from the new premium tax credits in 2014 and the value of the dollars going to help pay for insurance. We found that an estimated 28.6 million Americans will be eligible for the tax credits in 2014, and that the total value of the tax credits that year will be $110.1 billion. Houston, we have a problem! The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the tax credits to purchase coverage...

For the next 17 weeks, Durham's sixth-graders are playing fantasy football, the wildly popular game that has millions of participants nationwide. Most who play do so for bragging rights among their peers and the chance to win a few bucks. But these students are playing in teacher Lance Mangham's math class. It's a trend that is reaching classrooms across the country as teachers search for lessons that go beyond traditional textbooks and worksheets to tap students' interests.